Pages

01 September 2013

Pack of the Day 17: Garbage Pail Kids Chrome Value Pack

At Wal-Mart a couple of weeks ago I saw that Garbage Pail Kids Chrome had come out. I am not necessarily a big fan of the franchise, but my childhood coincides roughly with the original series' release. I don't know that I would chase a full set of these, but I did pick up a value pack and an additional regular pack.﻿

The concept of this set is to take the original Garbage Pail Kids series from 1985 and apply the Chrome treatment to them. Subsets include never-released Garbage Pail Kids from that era and pencil artwork from the originals. I believe that as far as inserts go, there are the usual array of Refractors and cards autographed by artist John Pound. You can see in the scan that Geeky Gary looks a bit different, because that card is a Refractor.﻿

﻿

The backs of the cards feature various snarky Awards and Permits with a blank line for filling a name for the recipient of said honor. You can see in the lower right that Geeky Gary is labeled as a Refractor, so it's a little easier to identify Refractors as such. I don't know if X-Fractors and whatnot have special labels or not, because I didn't pull any of them.

From what I can gather from a very small amount of research, each original GPK picture had two different names. I don't recall reading if different names got sent to different markets or whether they all were just packed out that way. So Cranky Frankie and Bad Brad are doubles in artwork but not in name, which is the opposite of most of the SP variants in sports cards, where the name is the same but a different picture is used.﻿

The backs of the differently-named cards are the same, so there isn't any new content on them aside from the name and numbering.﻿

﻿

Creepy Carol and Scary Carrie are an additional pair of cards with different names. This is the part of the post where I feel obligated to write something between pictures, but I have mostly run out of things to say. I kind of wish these cards were stickers, because they really belong on notebooks, walls, and the underside of diner tables.

Shadowy Sheila is the start of my allocation of the Lost Garbage Pail Kids, designs that were allegedly created in the 80s but did not make it into production at that time. They get an L in front of their card numbers and an explanation of their origins on the back. For some reason I find Shadowy Sheila vaguely more offensive than the other cards I pulled. I think it has to do with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in Japan during WWII, after which the shadow of one of the victims was left behind on the steps of the Sumitomo Bank. Kind of heavy material to associate with a set of Garbage Pail Kids, but that's the association that comes to my mind.﻿

I kind of like the Busy-Body License on the back of Tommy Tomb. I can think of quite a few folks in my life who would qualify for that certificate.

Finally, I pulled three more of the Lost GPK and one of the Pencil Art cards featuring the original pencil art from the creation of the 1985 set. I'm not sure how the numbering on the Pencil Art cards works, but they are differentiated by the artwork and a silver-colored border.﻿

I do not think I will try to finish out the set, although the checklist is small enough that it probably wouldn't take much doing, depending on collation. The Chrome treatment seems to be done well, and for long-time fans there is some original material in the set to help offset the fact that this is mostly just a shiny reprint set. I'd like to see these done as stickers or at least packed with one sticker per pack as an insert, but maybe that set is coming down the road. I don't even know if Chrome would lend itself to being printed on stickers.﻿

About Me

The intention of my blogs is to focus on my hobbies, but they often wind up covering other things instead. My dormant blog, The Raz File, is centered on miniature wargames and painting. My other blog, The Raz Card Blog, is about trading cards and collectibles.